America is sick unto death!

 President Biden’s America is sick unto death.  Forget COVID.  America is now sick for the following reasons.  1. We are now a Godless country.  2. Politics is about spreading the next big lie for the next news cycle. 3. Political power is the new economy.  4. A politics that promotes self-interest as a tool to build a constituency is promoting eventual doom for all.  5. Sick leadership begets the spawning of sick voters.  Congratulations Joe.

Another great politic of history, began as a small democracy in Italy in the 6^th century BC and began expanding into the 3^rd century BC.  As it expanded beyond the Italian border it ceased to value democracy, rather, the people chose to be ruled by one man, the all-powerful Emperor.  The empire quickly expanded through the know Mediterranean world and enjoyed two hundred years of prosperity and growth, then divisions within and without gave way to three hundred years of chaos, decline, defeat and dismemberment. The history of these last three hundred years of the Roman Empire are not pretty with failing leadership and a populace obsessed with the blood sports.  In totality, the empire lasted five hundred years.

America is at a similar crossroad in our history.  We began as a rare bird in this world, the democracy established in 1776 and 245 years later we are looking down over the cliff that can only lead to disaster for all, every man, women and child.  It is simplistic to blame our leaders for the coming carnage because too a large extent, political leaders gain and maintain their control by offering but never extending to the people the security and goodies the people want.  The people are easily duped. Like catnip dangling on a string, the power hungry manipulators turn the ignorant masses and against their own best self interest, real democracy, not the fake version touted by the power hungry Democrats.  

The easily manipulated folks are us!

G.Goslaw

Landers. CA

Autocracy

Chucky Shumer, the Democratic Senator from New York and majority leader in the Senate, says that it is time for bold change in America!  Change you say?  What is your real motive for change Mr. Shumer?  You don't care about progressive ideology, you have sat in Washington for four decades, suddenly you are a spokesman for the new political winds for change.  We don't buy it!  You are a political chameleon, changing your spots as you divorce your agenda from any concern for all Americans, not just the new guys.  In our time, your sudden rebirth as a progressive socialist says that your first concern is for Democratic political power, regardless of the costs that you dump on we 75 million. There was a time not long ago when politicians at least mouthed a loyalty to country above party.  Where has the loyal opposition gone?

The new agenda from the radical left is a very old agenda.  The radicals are pushing upon us an autocracy, a body politic that rears it's ugly head in many forms.  Simply put, it is the top down rule by the political elites or one elitist, over the lives of we little people, which means to the elites, all the people.  The power hungry elitists of our American moment are the Democrats, primarily the Democratic Party leaders such as Chucky.  Their only agenda is to change America into their fiefdom, where the sole viable political party has absolute control over the people.  I will not bore you with examples from history and the present worldwide conflicts but America has been the body politic, that has had the most success at avoiding such top down authoritarian control.  That is, until 2020.

Now, in Schumer's changed America, after cheating their way into power by insisting on no name voters in the wake of the China virus, the new politics of our time is taking drastic actions to cement their control.  Cementing control is best achieved, in their world, by making America Poor.  They say to themselves, governmental control of our national means of production should do the trick.  The new American "elitists" shall decide or authorize economic winners and losers, as long as they pay their fair share to the government and pledge allegiance.  People of both parties, Democrat and Republican, wake up, you have been duped. As an example that will foreshadow the future, don't you see how Democratic leadership has twisted the Covid 19 response in so many Democratic states?  The biggest lie of the 21st century is, "we are all in this together"! No way!  The government decides who will be paid to sit at home and who will have their lives destroyed economically by closing only certain businesses.  

Flooding our country with the very poor illegal "refuge seekers" is plan "B".  These folk will surely repay national openness with their votes to Democrats well into the future, so goes the Democratic elites playbook.  It is of no concern to the elites that an invasion of the poor and uneducated will bloat our welfare system and drive down the wages of working people.  Our taxes will skyrocket as we all become poor, except of course, those of us who are feeding on the government. Can an open borders policy be anything other than another Democratic ploy to Make America Poor and thereby make opposition to the government nigh unto impossible?  To those simplistic voters who voted for Biden in 2020, to those voters who believe an open border will not affect them, the Democrats and their trickle down poverty economics will come for you next!

Then there is plan "C".  Socialism as the ultimate authority in our lives is only popular among the few.  To gain and perpetuate socialist control, the power brokers must paint themselves as the good guys while painting anyone who disagrees with them as evil conspirators to be feared. Their reliance on childish name calling, character assassination, racial warfare, class warfare and income inequality are a natural fit for scaring big questions out of a dubious populace.  The deployment of 20.000 troops in Washington also sends the same ready message.  Soon the threats will escalate to enforcement, fines, imprisonment or the Schumer agenda may employ poisoning as they do in Russia. Who, pray tell, are the extremists?  Are our free speech advocates really the extremists?

How about plan "D"?  The Schumer, Democratic Party, Socialist plan is to trash our traditional democratic priorities, the American Constitution and our national elections. America now smells!  The Constitution has been under attack for decades, particularly since Roe verses Wade. Our new elites care not to understand the priorities of the Constitutional Congress, only to make adjustments and additions to fit their social and political norms.  Anyway, the Constitution is irrelevant, so they say, a mere ancient text written by and for a bunch of racists, how can it be valuable?  So goes the new leftist rational, to them, tradition is an evil to be purged.          

As unjust as this change may be, as tragic as it is, the Schumer agenda for change is working and America will probably be doomed to wallow in the feces of a totalitarian autocracy forever. Gone are the priorities of our ancestors who prized liberty above all else!

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA    

           

The Critics

 Critics of universalism espouse three arguments used to silence anyone who should believe in something other than the religious heaven and hell scenario.  These arguments are primarily misunderstandings of what they think is being said.  The first argument is that universalism is not biblical. This argument can only be arrived at by avoiding the totality of scripture to focus on a few passages that, rightly understood by the religious powers that be, give a distorted picture of eternity.  Bluntly, these folk are guilty of lazy reading of the Bible. This is not entirely the fault of the people in the pew on Sunday but is a result of the proof texting that goes on in the pulpit. A verse or a phrase easily becomes a junping off point for a religious tirade.   

The second argument is that universalism is anti God when nothing can be further from the truth.  A universalist believes in a bigger God than the kinder garden understandings of eternity given to us by the Church. How big is your God?  Is your God as big as infinite space with it's billions of solar systems ever changing?  Why is the spiritual expectation to forgive regardless of the offense here on earth but God will punish most of us with brimstone and fire for an eternity?  The religious answer is that God is a just God and this God must punish we wicked ones but it just doesn't square with reality. Is the blessing of life some kind of test to qualify for a positive eternal future?  If this is your understanding of eternity, no one on earth nor in the Bible ever passed that test. We all are the most miserable.

The third misunderstanding is that universalism dethrones Jesus Christ as a religious icon. This is a valid criticism of universalism but inadequate. Religions and the many religious icons are merely second rate to the magnificence of eternity. Who was Jesus, you ask?  Jesus was a God chosen messenger and prophet of eternity who appeared among us at the appointed hour.  This messenger preached to us about the God of eternity, accomplished miracles and was raised to eternal life, confirming his message.  For the first three hundred years after the resurrection, this Jesus was not labeled by any believer as a religious icon. Jesus only led us and them toward eternity.

One man's opinion.

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA   

                

Addendum

 All are flawed, some more than others but we are all flawed, right?  Therefore, if there is a God, eternity is the fix for all.  The theft and eating of the apple in the Garden of Eden, is a biblical story giving legs to an obvious fact of human life, a fact we all share.  Being banished from the forever garden or being born to human parents is one and the same, a separation from ultimate, eternal values and a death sentence.  A separation and sentence we all share, therefore, we all will be ultimately fixed by the power of eternity. This I so believe.

Religion is a pill to relieve our lost or flawed symptoms but is powerless to change or fix our selfish human nature which is bound to each individual in this life.  From garden to grave, our human nature is to kill, expressed in all manner of ill will toward others, our personal or corporate enemies. Violence and the need to destroy, it is who we are.  “If I don’t get my way or if I am hungry or if I must defend myself, I will kill to get what is desired.”  That is what we say in our innermost souls while we vehemently deny this compulsion from the housetops. Those who deny the loudest seem to be, if truth were told, the most culpable.  Yes, this is relative culpability but we are all culpable to some degree, in some measure, in our thought patterns and/or daily practice (Sermon on the Mount). 

Jesus and universalism.

Our time

 The new American reality.... duck and cover but live free or die!

ggoslaw

Context

 Biblical context is the subject of this posting.  The dictionary defines context as “the whole situation, background, or events relevant to a particular event, personality, etc.”  The disgrace of most biblical understandings is the historical disregard for the whole context in favor of the minutia, which may or may not support a particular religious group think.  Biblical thinkers argue minutia.  This disgrace is validated in tens of thousands of books, by every religious structure from time immemorial to this very hour.  Few have ever cared about the big picture, preferring their religious givens.  The Bible, in my humble opinion, is not a religious textbook but seems to be a running account through history of the disparity of the power of religion and the power of raw spirituality, always in flux, intermingling and rocking back and forth.    

Moses climbed the mountain and came down to us with a pure spiritual message from God, written on stone tablets.  The people and by extension, we humans, vehemently rejected this pure message, preferring to write our own sorted futures.  Reacting, Moses got angry at his people, breaking the first stone tablets into a thousand pieces.  Returning to the mountain again Moses came down the second time with the revised religious version, shared in the Bible as the Ten Commandants.  The result being that there are now acceptable or forgivable excuses to deviate from the pure message of God.  “Thou shalt not” now becomes a discussable directive and the Mosaic Law is available for human debate.  The law in Moses’s time worked the same way it works today, having money and being politically connected always tips the scales of justice.  Exceptions in the name of God are now allowable, this new version turned Moses and we humans into terrorists, igniting our dark side.  As long as it is acceptable or excusable or forgivable to kill in the name of God and country, we qualify as a terrorist organization, at least, it would seem, according to God.

When I first began to read and ask questions of the Bible, I was perplexed because there seemed to be two different Bible characters named Moses.  The youthful Moses who killed in defense of his own people and subsequently ran scared for his life, spending the next 40 years hiding in the wilderness.  The second Moses, after his burning bush experience on the mountain top, finds the courage to accept an impossible mission back to Egypt and his old enemies.  God even took the voice of Moses from him but the Pharaoh got the message anyway, “let my people go!”  This impossible mission in human terms, was accomplished by relying exclusively upon faith in the power of the Spirit of God.  As a result, the history of the Spirit lead exodus from Egypt says that might does NOT make right, the powerless were victors.  The Moses who came down from the mountain the second time was again in a religious mode, this mode says that might does make right.  Moses and the people of God then invaded their promised land, embarking on a scorched earth campaign to kill every man, women and child that inhabited their prophetic inheritance.  All this killing was for the sake of supposed religious purity.

A second watershed moment occurred about 1500 years later when a wondering itinerant Galilean spiritualist named Jesus was noticed by the people.  The faith of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, which long ago was perverted to become a mere religion, had again, in this timeframe, as it does in every time frame, become irrelevant to the daily lives of the people.  This Jesus, who had no religious affiliation, no formal religious or secular education beyond family, spoke to the people listening with an otherworldly authority that attracted a growing following. For him, earthly boundaries seemed irrelevant and the unexpected became the expected, he gave orders to the spirit world, the natural world, the weather and even the finality of death itself.  Jesus spoke of the eternal kingdom of God beyond death but much to our surprise he demonstrated that a piece of God’s eternal kingdom and the consequent responsibilities are available to the living.   According to Jesus, this Kingdom reality can be trusted, win or lose.  Once again, earthly might does NOT make right when the Spirit moves.  

An angel spoke this truth to the prophet Zechariah, “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord Almighty.” How can we recognize the almighty Spirit of God as opposed to human bullying?  There seems to be a biblical pattern, the Almighty God acts in the moment of weakness, desperation and dependence upon His spiritual power and presence.  It’s not us. Much like a raging bull, all we have to do is get out of the way before we get trampled.  Getting out of the way of the Spirit of God is about getting our individual personhood out of the way.  Noah got himself out of the way, accepted the ridicule and built an ark.  Moses climbed the mountain to inspect a burning bush that surely must have been an illusion and then went on a mission in the power of the Almighty.  David walked with the Spirit as a young man, accepting the arrows of King Saul without malice and then when he became king, his ego with a religious bent got in the way.  You and I, all of us have similar stories to tell if we dared.  Most of us never let go of our stuff and let the Spirit move.  Spirit aware life is, somehow, exceedingly difficult for we manipulative humans insisting on looking good to gain the praise of others.  Getting out of the way of the Spirit is so difficult that most of us will never know it, religion or no religion.  I am no exception.

The Almighty Spirit chooses to act, or not to act, in certain desperate and precise moments when someone makes themselves vulnerable. The decision to act on our behalf is not ours, our only choice is to be vulnerable. Religion is easy.  Being vulnerable and allowing the Spirit of God to call the shots, not so much.  One might ask, why did the people revolt the first time Moses came down the mountain?  Why did the people put the fulfillment of God’s promise on their own shoulders?  Why did the people of Jerusalem praise Jesus riding into town on a donkey and within three days abandoned him to a cruel death on the cross?  It would seem that some of the people had false expectations or the wrong expectations and a lust for the power to have their immediate needs met.  When their needs were ignored, the people and the religious folk turned on Jesus who barely opened his mouth to defend himself, preferring to trust in the wisdom and power of the Spirit of eternity.

Jesus had told us all that we needed to know about living eternity wise in the Sermon on the Mount.  These are the most difficult words for we mortals to hear, far beyond any religious ethic.  Every religious ethic is about hedging these absolute words of Jesus.  Some are easier than others but some are exceedingly impossible.  We are to live defenseless in this dangerous world.  We are to live sharing our stuff whenever asked by anyone.  The most impossible is to turn the other cheek, to accept ridicule without taking the offense.  May I suggest that Jesus uses the simple and profound rational, if one truly believes in eternity, the priorities of this world should not matter.  We all should be asking, what American can live this way?  What human being has ever lived this way?  Jesus is one human who lived out to his death this God given mission or ethic.  Spirituality is above and beyond religion, it is about laying our earthy lives open to the whatever in this life in order to welcome eternity. 

Joachim Jeremias, a relatively modern biblical scholar and theologian wrote a little book called “the sermon on the mount”.  I like little books; most books are 80% fluff and footnotes.  This one asks the right question, how are we as Jesus believers to take these most difficult, if not impossible words?   Shall we cut off the hand that offends the Law? Shall we give our property to anyone who asks at any time?  How are we to relate to our evil enemies?  Shall we not object when the bullies of this world are inclined to push us around?  If taken literally, these are nonstarters in human terms so traditional Christianity has always had qualifiers to soften the impact of these most harsh words of Jesus.

As Dr. Jeremias explains, some would say that the sermon on the mount is a call to return to the legalism of the Old Testament perfectionist rule book religion.  Some would say, the words of Jesus were given to us as an impossible goal that would at least improve our lives as we reach toward that goal.  Some would say that Jesus spoke these words because life as the people knew it was about to end.  On page 12 of the little book, the author states that all three understandings are about Old Testament Law making the rule book religion our entrance into eternity.  Summarizing the understandings, “The first conception makes him (Jesus) a teacher of the law; the second a preacher of repentance; the third an apocalypticist (an end time prophet).”  Were any of these understandings a full reflection of the words of Jesus?

Dr. Jeremias says no, replacing them with a fourth understanding, the new religion of the Christ.  No longer does the Old Testament flexible Law hold sway for Jesus has given us a new time of Jesus grace. The sermon on the mount is a teaching moment for the new faith which was and is both the right words and the right deeds. The author makes a solid argument by adding other words of Jesus and piecing them with the sermon on the mount but should we not ask, is there a real difference between a Jewish legal excuse and a Christian grace excuse?  Is there any excuse for living in our world but avoiding the harsh words of Jesus?  While everything seems to fit logically, the leap to another religion does not explain all the harsh words.  We are still left with a quandy.  

Explain your words Jesus.   How shall we resist the bullies of this world who rob and kill us?  Shall we not have the right to personal property and be willing to give up our stuff should anyone demand it of us?  What if they want our money, house or retirement account?  Are we to give them even more than they ask?  How can we love or even be kind to those who are our enemies and wish us dead?  How can we tolerate slander and the demeaning of our personhood?  The Christian religion does not ask or expect these hard choices to be laid upon us, why should you?  Could it be that for all time we have been barking up the wrong tree or howling at the moon?  Could it be that the harsh words were more about eternity, that dimension beyond death?  Maybe, Jesus, you were making eternity sense not religious sense.  Could it be that the long-foretold appearance of Jesus was not so much as a religious icon but more importantly an eternity prophet and evangelist? 

The prophets have always been among us.  Most of our prophets have been pied pipers leading us on to earthly conquest while ironically claiming to defend the name of the whomever.  They tell us to kill in the name of their God and their prophetic understandings.  Jesus was not that kind of prophet nor was Moses prior to smashing the stone tablets.  These two pivotal biblical men who lived and died, just as you and I, were eternity watchers in this life.  Jesus gave us a glimpse of eternity in the sermon on the mount and Moses saw a glimpse of eternity as he starred into the burning bush which was not consumed.  The Bible doesn’t say what he saw but he left the mountain out of character with his past human compromises.  One might ask, what did Moses see in the burning bush?   He did see something, right?  Does it not seem logical to assume that Moses saw a vision of eternity?  Could it be that Moses shared this vision at the very beginning of his writings, known to us as the Garden of Eden?  Both ends of eternity are illuminated for us in the words of these two biblical giants.

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA

 

 

 

Eternity

A viable theology, according to this knucklehead, must either be sensible or admittedly senseless.  Those flavors that can only muster some strange conflagration of both mind and spirit are destined to befuddle and bewilder.  The theological exhorter who is bound by both, must somehow prove the sense in the senseless.  Have you heard of such a successful exhortation?  

Every Christian theology book, of which I am marginally familiar, begets thousands of words to instruct us in how to bridge this conundrum by making the implausible, seemingly plausible.  Wouldn’t it be more plausible to accept the reality of eternity as a 100% senseless matter of faith beyond reason?  The problem with going to this place is that we must give up being right or better than other understandings, give up a provable righteousness. 

The God of eternity says to all of us, relax, I got this!

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca